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STEPHEN H. TYNG, D.D. 

Rector of St. George's Church, " 



NEW-YORK. 



^¥ 



11 

' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 

Chap 

She/f 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



^^^S)-^QSi^'^-&^?'e~j,^,&\$^i(9^^^&^^liS)\Qie,\;$^ei'^iQ^ 



BMMMMM'^*^^-^ 



etiristiau aosalts. 



A DISCOUESE, 



DELIVERED IN 



ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH, NEW-YORK, 

APRIL 30th, 1S63, THE DAY OF NATIONAL FAST. 



STEPHEX H 

UECTOR OF ST. GEO 



JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS 

FIBE-PROOF BnlLDINGf, 

COBNER OF FRANKFORT AND JACOB STREETS. 




1863. 



•3 



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^ 



(Kijin'stiau iLoga(t|)* 



Psalm ISY : 1, 2, 56. 

"By the rivers of Babylon, there wc sat down. 
Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. "We 
hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst 
thereof. If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right 
hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember 
thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; 
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." — 
Psalm 137 : 1, 2, 5, 6. 

This is the patriot's devotion to his 
country. It is a living spirit in his 
heart. It clings to his own land and 
people in their lowest depression as 
truly as in their highest prosperity. It 
is living and active within him, to what- 
ever contumely and reproach it may ex- 
pose him. It is determined and unyield- 



4 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

ing, however multiplied and persecuting 
may be tlie foes he meets, or the disap- 
]:»ointments he endures. Nay, like every 
class of that true and faithful love, of 
which it is an illustration, its tenacity 
and power continually grow with the 
misfortunes of the land of his home, and 
even with his own despair of its re- 
covery. 

Never had the allotted home of the 
Israelite been so wasted, so trodden 
down as when this divine psalm was 
inspired, to utter for man forever its 
high illustration of domestic and eth- 
nical love. Jerusalem was burned with 
fire. Judea was lying waste and cap- 
tive. The city was solitary that was full 
of people. She had become as a widow. 
She that was great among the nations, 
and princess among the provinces, had 



CHRISTIA y L YALTY. 5 

become tributary. Her adversaries were 
the chief, her enemies prospered. Utter 
despair rested on all her prospects, so 
far as man, or human power were con- 
cerned. The great hammer of the earth, 
as Nebuchadnezzar was called, had brok- 
en her in pieces. And only the cove- 
nant and j)romise of her God remained, 
as the hold for faith and hope, upon any 
prosperity or restoration in the future. 

What then ? Shall the faithful Israel- 
ite give up to the triumphs of despair ? 
Shall he turn upon his suffering mother, 
and spurn her with his foot, because 
others wickedly hate and despise her? 
By no means. He sits down by the 
rivers of Babylon, he hangs his harp 
upon the willows there ; he weeps when 
he remembers his beloved Zion. But 
he declares that his right hand shall be 



6 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

palsied, and liis tongue shall be silent in 
death, before he will consent to forget 
Jerusalem, or to prize her welfare and 
her honor above his highest joy. In the 
full confidence of his soul, in the cer- 
tainty of the divine promise he still ad- 
dresses his faith to the God of Israel. 
" Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon 
Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the 
set time is come, for thy servants take 
pleasure in her stones, and favor the 
dust thereof"' He still confidently looks 
for a destruction of destroying Babylon, 
and for the rewarding her, as she had 
served them. 

This is an illustration, and it is a 
most affecting and commanding iUustra- 
tion of that loyalty in man of which we 
must speak as of one of his highest du- 
ties. It is man s faithful, undying love, 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 7 

directed to Lis country, liis nation, tlie 
land which it occupies, the institutions 
which distinguish it, the interests, pros- 
pects, and welfare which are appointed 
for it. This one outspreading sea of 
human affection gains a specific name, 
as it laves the shore of every separate 
portion of the dwelling-places of man. 
And whether filial, marital, parental, 
social, or national, it is but the same 
generic spirit, designated by a new name 
as it becomes specially marked by new 
relations in this divine geography. 

When this heaven-born love touches 
the shore of national relations, it is loy- 
alty. But one higher, grander relation 
can it have ; that one which exalts it 
beyond all earthly bounds, and bids it 
roll upon the dominion and the person 
of the great Lord of lords, and King 



8 CHRISTIAN LOYAL TY. 

of kings. The Church, the person, the 
heavenly home of the Great Head of the 
Church, the Prince of the kings of the 
earth, is the one only nobler, loftier, 
more abiding exercise and display of 
human love. 

For a man basely to say he has no 
loyalty, is to say he has no love, no 
lionor, no integrity, no honesty, no 
gratitude. It is to acknowledge the im- 
alloyed dominion of base materialism 
and brutal selfishness, and to boast in 
the degTadation which must forever at- 
tend it. It is to display with ghastly 
satisfaction an acknowledged spirit, 
which, no human being can trust or 
love, made only, and qualified only, for 
"treason, stratagem, and spoils." 

The child's love of his home, the fa- 
ther's love of his fiimil}^, the Christian's 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 9 

love of his Saviour, are the patriot's love 
of his country, and the citizen's loyalty 
to his nation and his government. And 
if the flowing fountain of the whole 
dwell within the man, the course of its 
streams is easily to be predicted. If the 
channels of these streams are dry, the 
fountain-head has dried and ceased to 
flow. Indiflerence to the claims of na- 
tional loyalty, and still more, a coldness 
which comes with apparent depression, 
and a desertion which springs from the 
disappointment of individual selfish am- 
bition, is a spirit and character which 
every good man must abhor. I should 
feel neither my proj^erty nor my per- 
son, — my home nor my family, — my life 
nor my reputation to be safe within the 
grasp of a man who could boldly re- 
nounce the obli orations of unchano-in.2^, 



1 CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 

consistent lojalty, and join himself to 
the revolutionary influence and 23lans 
contrived and combined to overthrow 
the dominion of a just authorit}', which 
had furnished him all his shelter and 
success, — and to break up the nation 
which had |)eacefullj lived and grown 
under its healthful shadow 

I confess the language of the text 
before us is the utterance of my con- 
sciousness and of my choice. I may 
weep beside the rivers of Babylon; I 
may see much and recall much in Jeru- 
salem to trouble me ; I may be dissatis- 
fied with much of man's control ; but I 
trust my right hand will be powerless, 
and my tongue be silent in death, be- 
fore I forget my home, my native land; 
or cease to prefer the welfare of my 
country, the honor of its government, 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 1 1 

and the glory of its flag above my chief 
joy. My heart goes out with the bard 
of Scotland : 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
"Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ! 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned, 

From wandering on a foreign strand ! 
If such there breathe, go, mark him well : 
For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
High though his titles, proud his name. 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf. 
The wretch, concentred all in self. 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
Can e'er untie the filial band 
That knits me to thy ru2:a;ed strand ? 



12 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

Still as I view each well-known scene, 

Think what is now, and what hath been, 

Seems as, to me, of all bereft. 

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left ; 

And thus I love them better still, 

Even in extremity of ill." 



^iMAMmiMEl 



ILojialts to Jrruisaltm is Hobc 
Cor i)tt ISfatiou* 



1. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
love of her people. I love my nation. 
I love tlieni because they are my nation, 
and I cannot separate my feelings in 
this relation between those who found 
their natural being in a birth upon this 
soil, and those who have chosen it as 
their own in a voluntary political birth 
in maturer life. I certainly love as in- 
dividuals the fellow-inhabitants of my 
own native town, the citizens of my 
own honored State, the descendants of 
my own pilgrim line, with a peculiar re- 
gard. I have most sincerely loved and 



14 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY, 

do still most sincerely love many of my 
own well-proved friends, in my South- 
ern ministry, — warmer hearts, dearer 
or more faithful friendship I shall never 
find. But my loyalty is not to Massa- 
chusetts or Kew-York, to my birthplace 
or my residence. Not to Maryland or 
Pennsylvania, so long my own happy 
homes, and the birthplaces of my child- 
ren. 

My love, my peculiar love, is still 
for its various reasons to all these. But 
my loyalty is to the United States of 
America, that great federal nation, 
which, wherever scattered, or however 
collected, have dwelt together under 
one glorious government, as one per- 
petual, indivisible people. This was 
the nation my honored father taught 
me in my youth to consider mine, and 
to love as mine. 



CHRISTIAN L TAL TY. 1 5 

Do tliej say it is a congeries of most 
promiscuous elements, gathered as tlie 
discontented from all lands? I confess 
the collection. But in this very discon- 
tent with all other lands, I discern also 
the most remarkable testimonies of an 
homogeneous character and purpose. 
They are the offshoots of all lands. 
They are the fruit of all lands. They 
are the scum, if men choose to call them 
so, of all lands, conceding in that very 
illustration, that they are the rising, vola. 
tile, progressive elements of all people, 
which the grinding of oppression has 
expressed, and the boiling of revolu- 
tions has disengaged. They are not the 
crude, dead, neutralized, conservative 
sediment and mass which remains be- 
hind when the work of preparation has 
been completed. They are the people 



1 6 CHRISTIAN L YA LTY. 

of all lands, who have cherished aspira- 
tions of freedom, and who could not en- 
dure the bondage of oppression, — who 
have so loved the form of liberty and so 
conceived the attractions of its priceless 
worth, that they have been willing to 
sunder all hereditary ties, and brave the 
storms of ocean, and all the wearings of 
gaining a new abode, that though their 
lives might be consumed in the perilous 
undertaking, their children, at least, 
might be free and independent. The 
very poorest of them had a perception 
of human rights, and an aspiration for 
human elevation, demonstrated in the 
very choice and hazard which they thus 
adopted, that the highest despot or 
richest nabob whom they left behind 
had no power to conceive. 

I honor the lowest and the poorest of 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 17 

them, because lie has shown himself a 
man, and with that homage with which 
mj Lord commands me to honor all 
men. Gathered here, whether they or 
their fathers thns came, they are a na- 
tion ; they are one nation ; they are 
my nation ; they are Americans ; and 
I love and honor them as snch. I 
have met them far from my native con- 
tinent — in Europe, in Africa, in Asia. 
They have looked up with me, and with 
equal delight to our common flag. And 
I have never met them without the wel- 
come of my heart, as Americans. I 
have saluted them whether coming from 
the ISTorth or the South, from the East 
or the West, on foreign shores, as my 
own countrymen. I never met them 
but with a brother's heart, and never 
received from them any other than a 



1 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

brother's response ; and I have rejoiced 
to meet them as such. 

I am still loyal to my nation. I will 
never give my consent to its dismember- 
ment or its separation. I cling to the 
one federal American j)eople ; not to a 
confederacy of States, but to a consoli- 
dated nation. I desh'e not to live to see 
a disunion of them for any reasons or 
upon any terms. I would far rather 
adopt any concessions of policy which 
did not involve absolute crime, and trust 
to the advancing influence of civiliza- 
tion, religion, and experience to remove 
the errors, and heal the sores which 
have been discovered, felt, or imagined, 
than I would yield to any consumma- 
tion of a purpose of separation ; still less 
to the atrocious and abominable com- 
binations of a treasonable overthrow. 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 1 9 

Even from tlie rivers of Babylon, in 
tlie lowest circumstances of depression, 
I slioiild still cry ont to my country- 
men, Be one people ; be one nation ; 
ablior, destroy tlie traitors who would 
..^divide you, and tlieir abettors wlio 
.|WOuld try to break you up ; banish 
them, drive them from your homes 
and your society, as instruments, the 
vilest instruments of your bitterest foes. 
Let Jerusalem be still a city at unity 
in itself, encircled with the walls of a 
3ommon defence from foes abroad, and 
bound together for an united subjuga- 
;ion of traitors at home. 



4 



S-o^altg to Jrrusalcm in ILoije to 



2. My loyal tj to Jerusalem is my love 
for lier territory. I have wandered 
through it from North to South, from 
East to West. I have gloried in the re- 
lative and competing prosperity of every 
part. Its hills and valleys, its mountains 
and streams, its plains and lakes, its farms 
and cities, its manufactories and work- 
shops, its churches and schools, its col- 
leges and hospitals, its asylums and 
beneficent homes, its halls of legisla- 
tion and of science, its rural towns 
embedded in beauty, and its commer- 
cial cities glowing with wealth, have 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 21 

been the apj^le of my eye, and the 
pride of my heart. 

I have roved in other Lands, beneath 
the shining of foreign suns, and the 
shade of foreign institutions ; amidst all 
the wonderful glories of ancient art, and 
long inherited civilization. I have not 
undervalued their attainments, or af- 
fected to despise their wonderful ad- 
vantages. I have gloried in the great- 
ness of man, and of man's accomjolish- 
ments, as I have contemplated the things 
which he has done. I have been ready 
to adore his Creator with new grati- 
tude, as I have surveyed the surprising 
achievements of the creature. But I 
have ever returned to my dear, my na- 
tive land, with new gratification, pride 
and delight. It has shone before me 
beneath its western sun, as the brightest, 



22 CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 

topmost branch of the ancient tree, 
around whose majestic trunk I had 
been wandering, and at w^hose wide- 
spread roots I had been seated. It has 
appeared before me, the very fruit of 
earth ; the noblest, richest fruit that 
earth has borne for man, or that man 
has gained from earth ; the very pur- 
pose for which all other lands have 
grown and thrived ; the rich autumn Qf 
humanity pouring out from its bosom 
the boundless stores, for the production 
of which the rest of man had been but 
the spring and summer. 

I love my country ; I love it with an 
intense affection. Every part of it is 
equally mine, and equally dear to me. 
I am a citizen of the United States. I 
will acknowledge no Korthern rights nor 
Southern rights. Virginia and South- 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 23 

Carolina are mine as rightly- and as 
lawfully as Massachusetts or Khode 
Island; Virginia, where the Massachu- 
setts Lincoln received the sword of Corn- 
wallis and finished the war of freedom ; 
South-Carolina, where the Ehode Island 
Greene delivered from English bondage, 
a people as dear to him as if dwelling on 
the shores of the Narraganset. My 
New-England blood has been sprinkled 
in a costly sacrifice over them both. 
Louisiana and Texas are mine as justly 
as New- York or Pennsylvania. My toil 
and my father's toil have helped to pur- 
chase them, and my hard-earned money 
has in its measure and degree been given 
for them both. 

I have a fee simple, indisputable 
right in every portion of this soil, from 
sea to sea, as a citizen of this nation, 



24 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

I will never consent to give it up. I 
am a citizen of the whole. I have a 
right to a domicil, a protected home, 
throughout the whole, which I will 
never yield. To separate this glorious, 
hard-earned land, to divide it, to disin- 
tegrate it, cut it up, parcel it out to a 
set of wild conflicting provinces, farm 
it out to the ambition of petty contend- 
ing satraps, gaining in blood a short- 
lived triumph, is a degradation and a 
social atrocity to which I will never 
consent. 

Because a set of marauding robbers 
have broken into my inherited domain, 
and maintaining a temporary intrench- 
ment there, demand of me to divide 
with them this noble inheritance, as if 
it were a pirate's spoils, shall I in base 
cowardice give up to them and concede 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 25 

tlieir claim ? I will never do it. I will 
never consent to the division of the land 
I love. I will never agree to regard 
other than as traitors the men that de- 
mand it, or the men who encourage 
such demands, or the men in official 
responsibilities who basely pander to 
them by indolence, or cowardice, or 
pique. I will never yield the right of 
my home to the power of burglars. I 
may be conquered, I may be carried a 
captive in chains, I may sit in solitude 
and weep beside the rivers of Babylon. 
But Jerusalem shall never say to me that 
I agreed to her destruction. I should 
deem protracted warfare nothing in 
comparison to a voluntary treason like 
this. 

If it demanded twenty years or seven- 
ty years of contest to preserve for mj 



2 6 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

cliildien the broad inlieritance my fa- 
thers gave to me, I should say to the 
generation that came after me. Fight it 
out to the end ; resist even unto blood, 
striving against sin ; but never yield the 
gifts of God to Satan, or the intrusted 
inheritance which you have received, to 
violence or riot. K power subdue you, 
rise against that power on every possible 
occasion of recovery, with an undying 
determination. Live as freemen on your 
fathers' land, or die as freemen striving 
to maintain it. Financial questions are 
nothing. Political questions are nothing. 
National debts are nothing. Life is noth- 
ing. If your country goes, little will be 
the worth of the wealth, or policy, or 
life, which you may hope to preserve. 
To my country my loyalty shall be 
unchallenged and unchanged, and I shall 



CHRISTIAN- LOYAL TY. 2 7 

consent to look only as traitors to lier 
welfare, "upon tlie men who plan, who 
counsel, or who encourage a plunder of 
her soil, from the whole people to whom 
it belongs. To those who come after me 
I say, Kever, never consent to give up 
this covenanted inheritance, intrusted by 
God to you, for the final, peaceful, secure 
asylum of suffering, persecuted men. 
Let the land of your fathers, the sa- 
cred, assured abode of a nation of free- 
men, be transmitted unbroken, solid, 
entire, untarnished, to the children who 
succeed you. Die, if it must be so, for 
it, but never give it up. 




Eosaltg to Jcint3(»altm iu Holier for 
Jcr Jlmncfplt of jFtcttrom. 



8. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
love for the freedom which she has 
established. Men may call the testi- 
monies of her Declaration of Independ- 
ence, a tissue of " glittering generalities," 
when they have no af&nity with the 
liberty which it proclaims, and no sym- 
pathy with the grandly humanizing in- 
fluence which it is desis^ned and destined 
to exercise. To my mind it stands on 
the highest platform of uninspired testi- 
monies. In it the noblest emotions, 
aspirations, sentiments, and principles of 
the heart of man speak out in golden, 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 2 9 

crystal sounds. "We hold tliese truths 
to be self-evident, that all men are cre- 
ated equal ; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to 
secure these rights, governments are in- 
stituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the govern- 
ed." What nobler testimony for human 
freedom, or human exaltation, was ever 
given ? When did the representative 
mind of progressive, rising humanity, 
ever announce its convictions and its 
purposes in a loftier strain, or in a 
grander formula? 

Under the shadow of such a heaven- 
born testimony, slavery is but a dismal 
looking fungus springing from the cor- 
ruptions of the earth. It was grow- 



30 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

iiig tliere wlien this divine canopy was. 
spread, thougli every thing in the very 
air and atmosphere of the nation testi- 
fied against it. And in a weak and 
deluded forbearance, singularly incon- 
sistent with their own principles and 
convictions, the men who mourned over 
its existence, hesitated to cut it up from 
its roots at once. It was suffered to con- 
tinue as a most abnormal, outrageous 
exception to all the institutions of the 
nation which thus permitted it. Like 
Milton's toad in Paradise, it stole a garb 
and covering of tolerated innocence to 
become the messenger of Satan, to whis- 
23er treason in the sleeping nation's ear, 
till men awoke and believed the dreams 
which they had seen, to be divine reve- 
lations ; and imagined that this horrid 
shape of cruelty and crime was really an 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 3 1 

institution of the Most High. The liv- 
ery of heaven was stolen for the service 
of the devil. The spotless holiness of 
Sinai was insulted, blasphemed, by drag- 
ging it to consecrate the most oppressive 
and shocking cruelties, which innocent 
and helpless victims ever endured. 

Yet the men who prepared and uttered 
this great testimony for freedom, solemn-, 
ly protested, at the very time, against the 
crime of slavery, even while they with- 
held the arm of violent excision. The 
great writer of the document, himself a 
slaveholder, in referring to its influences 
and results, said : "I tremble for my 
country when I reflect that God is just." 
He would seem to have been inspired as 
a prophet, to warn a listless people, of 
the very sorrows which we have encoun- 
tered, and the judgments which we now 



32 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

endure on its account. ''But judgment 
lingereth. not, and condemnation slum- 
bereth not." The hour of appointed retri- 
bution and responsibihty comes, and the 
men who would not hear shall be made 
to feel.' "All men are created equal," 
the African man as well as the European 
man, and wo unto that man who stealeth 
his brother and selleth him. The flxthers 
of the present generation, even on the 
very soil of slavery, testified unceasingly 
to this exceptional character of human 
bondage. They longed, they planned, 
they prepared, in every way, to limit, to 
restrain, to annul it. Any other idea 
than that it was a cursed thing, a dread- 
ful, even if, as some supposed, it had 
been an inevitable evil, was never broach- 
ed in Southern circles, till the present 
generation came into mature action. 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 33 

"There is not a man living, wlio 
wishes more sincerely than I do, to see 
a plan adopted for the abolition of 
slavery," said George Washington^ April 
12//2, 1786. 

"The scheme which you propose as a 
precedent, to encourage the emancipation 
of the black people in this country from 
the state of bondage in which they are 
held, is a striking evidence of the benev- 
olence of your heart," said Washington 
to Lafaijette, 1783. 

" it is the most earnest wish of Amer- 
ica, to see an entire sto^D forever put to 
the wicked, cruel and unnatural trade in 
slaves," said a Meeting at Fairfax^ F«., 
presided over by Washington^ July 18th, 
1774. 

" I tremble for my country when I 
reflect that God is just. His justice can 



34 CHRISTIAN L YAL TY. 

not sleep forever," said Jefferson^ in liis 
Notes on Slavery in Virginia^ 1782. 

" He has waged a cruel war against 
human nature itself," said Jefferson of 
the British King, in his draft of the 
Declaration of Independence, " violating 
its most sacred rights of life and lib- 
erty, in the persons of a distant people 
who never offended him, captivating and 
carrying them into slavery in another 
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death 
in their transportation thither. This 
piratical warfare, the opprobrium of in- 
fidel powers, is the warfare of the Christ- 
ian king of Great Britian. Determined 
to keep open a market where men should 
be bought and sold, he has prostituted 
his negative for suppressing every legis- 
lative attempt to prohibit or restrain this 
execrable commerce." 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 35 

" After the year 1800 of tlie Christian 
Era, tliere shall be neither slavery, nor 
involuntary servitude in any of the said 
States," (all of the territories then belong- 
ing to the United States,) said Jefferson's 
Ordinance of 1787, unanimously approved 
hy Congress and signed hy Washington. 

" We have seen the mere distinction 
of color made in the most enlightened 
period of time, a ground of the most 
oppressive dominion ever exercised by 
man over man," said James Madison. 

"We have found that this evil has 
preyed upon the very vitals of the Union 
and has been prejudicial to all the States 
in which it has existed," said James 
Monroe. 

" The tariff was only the pretext, and 
disunion and a Southern Confederacy the 
real ohjcct. The next pretext will be the 



3 6 CHRISTIAN L YAL TY, 

negro or slavery question/' said Andrew 
Jackson^ May^ 1833. 

" Sir, I envy neither tlie heart nor the 
head of that man from the Korth, who 
rises here to defend slavery on principle," 
said John Randolph^ of Roanoke. 

" The people of Carolina form two 
classes, the rich and the poor. The poor 
are very poor; the rich who have slaves 
to do all their work, give them no em- 
ployment. The little they get is laid out 
in brandy, not in books and newspapers ; 
hence they know nothing of the com- 
parative blessings of our country, or of 
the dangers which threaten it, therefore 
they care nothing about it," said General 
Francis Marion to Baron De KaTb. 

" So long as God allows the vital cur- 
rent to flow through my veins, I will 
never, never, never, by word or thought, 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY, 37 

by mind or will, aid in admitting one 
rood of free territory to the everlasting 
curse of human bondage," said Henry 
Clay, 

Alluding to the time the above senti- 
ment was uttered, Thos. H. Benton says : 

"That was a proud day. I could 
have wished that I had spoken the same 
words; I speak them now, telling you 
they were his, and adopting them as my 
own." 

The finest minds and hearts of the 
nation had been consulting together for 
this half century past, how to accom- 
plish a gradual and peaceful removal of 
the burden, before it should break forth 
into a violent assertion of its power and 
its consequents. To immediate and vio- 
lent emancipation I had always been 
most earnestly opposed. The friends of 



3 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

liberty struggled successfully to inau- 
gurate measures and sentiments tending 
to the nation's peaceful relief, until the 
abettors and supporters of the crime, 
awake to the fact, that freedom was 
spreading its living and life-giving pow- 
er through, all the land, plunged us 
into the catastrophe, in the crisis of 
which we are now contending; deter 
mined that the country and the nation 
should be sacrificed to slavery rather 
than the dominion of slavery over the 
nation should be cast off and renounced. 
And now these traitors to their coun- 
try say, that they who have always con- 
tended for freedom are the ones who 
have produced the overhanging judg- 
ment, and are responsible for its results. 
It is a glorious testimony to their fidelity 
and their influence. Doubtless, had we 



CHRISTIAN L YAL TV. 3 9 

quietly lain in our beds reposing, con- 
templating with our open eyes tlie gath- 
ering hordes of robbers around our dwell- 
ings, and agreed to lie still and silent 
while they plundered, our abode and 
murdered our household, there would 
have been no agitation — their work 
would have been a quiet work, and a 
successful work. And our refusal to be 
peacefully destroyed may well be said to 
be one cause of the violence of the as- 
sault which has ensued, to accomplish 
that by force, which they failed to effect 
by craft. 

"\Ye may well be thankful that our 
nation's freedom did find some bold 
and watchful guardians and defenders. 
We may be equally grateful that they 
were allowed to wield a power in the 
nation, which should so effectually resist 



4 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

and excite tliese sons of violence while 
treading the Declaration of our Independ- 
ence beneath their feet, and destroying 
both the honor of our country as the 
abode of liberty, and the priceless inher- 
itance of universal freedom which it had 
received. Certainly we are in the midst 
of a war for freedom — the great, the 
grandest contest for human liberty which 
the human race has ever seen. I mourn 
over its sorrows. I grieve for the person- 
al afflictions to which it gives inevitable 
occasion. Its money cost is nothing — a 
poor, degrading consideration. Cost what 
it will, if it beggars us into a nation of 
daily operatives, its glorious result will 
be cheaply purchased. It will leave us a 
free nation — a nation true to our solemn 
pledges to the world, true to the instincts 
of our nature and our descent — true to 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 41 

our covenant with God. And we sliall 
lift up a grander, nobler head beneath 
the sun and sky of our Father's dwelling 
from the humble abodes of honest, tri- 
umphant poverty, than we could ever 
have claimed in the palaces of ill-gotten 
luxury or disgraceful wealth. 

Slavery at last has received its inevit- 
able death-blow. Our nation's aspect and 
our national profession are at unity with 
each other. Its death has come far enough 
from all my plans, from all my struggling 
endeavors for these forty years of per- 
sonal interest in the subject ; indeed, 
directly in violation of every scheme 
which I had cherished and ever}^ hope 
I had entertained. But it has come in 
the wonderful providence of God, in the 
very judgments of his righteousness upon 
the people who clung to it and main 



42 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

tained it, by their own choice, violence, 
and crime. I am content with his ap- 
pointment: "Even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in thy sight." At any rate, 
slavery in this country is abolished. It 
can never be reconstructed. Its recon- 
struction can never be attempted without 
greater contests and more terrific scenes 
of violence than we have yet seen. 

Jerusalem is free. And my loj^alty to 
Jerusalem is in my love for her freedom. 
No land of earth had equal professions, 
annunciations, claims before. And now 
no land of earth will have equal realities 
to respond to them. No caste influence 
can here oppress the poor, or forbid his 
elevation. Ko oppression can here arrest 
the upward motion of talent, merit, or 
fidelity. No capital can purchase the 
bondage of labor. No assumptions of 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 43 

individuals can limit or fetter the liberty 
of man. Tlie poorest immigrant may 
stand on our shore witli the feeling that 
he has reached at last a land where man 
enjoys " the free air, and the free use of 
his own limbs." He finds every incentive 
to enterprise, every inducement to integ- 
rity, every recompense to thrift, every re- 
ward to honest and honorable economy. 
It is the home of freedom, the home of rest 
— the protected, lawful, peaceful abode of 
man. I rejoice in the thought. And I 
say to my children after me : Kever 
yield this priceless inheritance of human 
liberty ; never sacrifice by any compro- 
mise the unrestricted, universal freedom 
of your nation; never consent to any 
arrangement in which you may not look 
back upon your fathers' line and home, 
and still triumphant say : '' Jerusalem, 
the mother of us all, is free." 






(^ 



Ho^altg to Jerusalem in ILobc for 
Ijer (S:onstittttion. 



4. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love 
for her Constitution. This very word in 
its technical use is almost an American 
word exclusively. Europe has been fa- 
miliar with charters, concessions by the 
assumed power of individual royalty to 
the desires and demands of the dissatis- 
fied people. England is familiar with 
the idea of constitutional liberty, and 
speaks habitually, and with just pride, 
of the British Constitution. But consti- 
tutional liberty there is but the hard- 
wrung concessions to the people from the 
crown, in a succession of revolutions and 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 45 

demands. And the British Constitution is 
but the accumulation of all these conces- 
sions, and of the principles which have 
been established bj them ; known only to 
the learned and professional ; shut out 
from the view of the millions who are to 
be governed by them. To this day, consti- 
tutions are still the cry of the awakened 
people of Europe, and constitutions are 
the dread of those who rule them. 

Jerusalem had het glorious constitution 
from the divine gift — a book in the hands 
of every one, to be read at home, to be 
studied by children, to be talked of by 
the way. America has received her Con- 
stitution from the gracious providence of 
God ; the grand result of ages of human 
experience and observation ; the admired 
shape and cast of man's wisdom among 
the nations of the earth. 



46 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

A charter is the form and evidence of 
a conceded authority granted by superior 
power. A constitution is a mutual ar- 
rangement, a reciprocal concession and 
authority of equal corporators, each pos- 
sessing the authority in himself, and each 
bringing with himself the sovereign con- 
stituting power. Thus our national Con- 
stitution opens with its avowal of au- 
thority and sovereign designs : " We, the 
people of the United States, in order to 
form a more perfect union, establish just- 
ice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 
for the common defence, promote the 
general welfare, and secure the blessings 
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, 
do ordain and establish this Constitution 
for the United States of America." 

ISTever was there a more majestic ex- 
hibition of sovereign power ; never was 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 4? 

tliere a more lionorable display of mu- 
tual concession and self-restraint. The 
very idea of a Constitution involves the 
necessity of personal concession in re- 
turn for mutual support. It is in this 
precise thought that constitutional liber- 
ty differs from savage freedom. No ra- 
tional man would ask the uncontrolled 
freedom of bis own will and action in 
the necessity of conceding equal liberty 
to every other man. He thus puts him- 
self, simply and only upon his own per- 
sonal defence, against every conceivable 
assault of human violence and crime. 
"Where there is no law, there is no 
freedom," says the eminent John Locke. 
"The political liberty of the citizen," 
says Montesquieu, "is a tranquillity of 
mind arising from the opinion which each 
person has of his own safety. In order 



4 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

to have this libertj^, it is requisite that 
the government be so constituted, as that 
one man need not to be afraid of another. 
In a free state, everj man who is sup- 
posed a free agent ought to be con- 
cerned in his own government; there- 
fore the legislative power should reside 
in the whole body of the people or their 
representatives." 

Such is the American Constitution — a 
beautiful machinery of intellectual con- 
ception and of moral influence, working 
with its powers and restraints, its checks 
and balances, its provisions and prohibi- 
tions in a thoroughly adjusted harmony 
and in remarkable order and grandeur of 
operation. It is written in the plainest 
terms. Mr. Dallas said : " The Constitu- 
tion in its words is plain and intelligible, 
and it is meant for the home-bred, imso- 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 49 

pliisticated uiiderstandiDgs of our fellow- 
citizens." Tliis is the precious, priceless 
treasure, transmitted by our fathers to 
us. The first, the only instance on earth 
of a nation creating itself as one peo- 
ple, and forming and arranging the very 
terms and conditions on which they could 
or would agree to live as such. 

It is not a charter — or, if so, it is a 
charter from God to man. It is a mu- 
tual constitution, a reciprocal setting up 
and supporting of each other and of all, 
by a people, in the exercise of their own 
sovereign and indisputable right. The 
people made it, the appointed agents of 
the people manage and work it, and the 
people alone can sustain and perpetuate 
it. I unite from my heart in the formula, 
"The Constitution as it is," as we re- 
ceived it, or to be amended only in the 
way which itself prescribes. 



50 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

Well does Judge Story say of it: 
" Who can preserve the rights and 
liberties of the peojDle, when they sliall 
be abandoned by themselves ? Who shall 
keep watcli in the temple, when the 
watcbmen sleep at their posts? Who 
shall call npon the people to redeem 
their possessions and revive the repub- 
lic, when their own hands have deliber- 
ately and corruptly surrendered them to 
the oppressor, and have built the prisons 
or dug the graves of their own friends ? 
America, free, happy, and enlightened as 
she is, must rest the preservation of her 
rights and liberties upon the virtue, inde- 
jiendence, justice, and sagacity of the 
people. If either fall, the republic is 
gone. Its shadow may remain with all 
the pomp and circumstance and trickery 
of government, but its vital power will 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 5 1 

have departed. If ever the day shall ar- 
rive in which the best talents and the best 
viriues shall be driven from office by in- 
trigue or corruption, by the ostracism of 
the press, or the still more unrelentiDg 
persecution of party, legislation will cease 
to be national ; it will be wise by acci- 
dent and bad by system." 

The protection of this constitutional 
liberty of the United States of America 
is a duty which the citizens owe to them- 
selves who enjoy it — to their ancestors, 
who transmitted it — and to their pos- 
terity, who will claim to receive from 
them this sacred birth-right, the noblest 
inheritance of mankind. Again Judge 
Story says: ''If, upon a closer survey 
of all the powers given by the Constitu- 
tion, and all the guards upon their ex- 
ercise, we shall perceive still stronger 



5 2 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

inducements to fortify tliis conclusion 
and to increase our confidence in the 
Constitution, may we not justly hope 
that every honest American will concur 
in the djdng expression of Father Paul, 
' Esto perpetua' — may it be perpetual. 
This glorious Constitution of my coun- 
try I love. I have always loved it. I 
read it, I read of it, with delight yet 
more and more, as years go by. I look 
at its embryo formation in the inherited 
principles of representative government 
and taxation, which my fathers brought 
with them from their English home. 1 
look at its infant birth in the Articles of 
Confederation in 1777, when the thirteen 
separate States formed themselves into a 
confederacy of States, and assumed the 
hallowed name of the United States of 
America, in a firm league of friend- 



CHRISTIAN L YA LTY. 53 

ship witli each other for their defence, 
the security of their liberties, and their 
mutual and general welfare ; in mutual 
obligations of assistance against all force 
offered to, or attacks made upon them, 
or any of them, on account of religion, 
sovereignty, trade, or any other pre- 
tence whatever; and when in the same 
j'-ear they adopted their sacred flag, the 
banner and token of freedom and self- 
government, with its thirteen equal 
stripes, and its thirteen united stars. 
I look at the more complete and final 
formation of this wonderful instrument 
of national security and power, when 
in 1785, Virginia proposed a Convention 
for its formation ; and in 1786 and 
1787, the other States agreed to meet 
her representatives in council for tlie 
purpose. 



54 CHRISTIAN L YALTT. 

It was doubtless a compromise and 
concession of conflicting interests. But 
then it was truly this. Tliese conces- 
sions were nobly made. And its result 
was, tlie creating of a nation — a nation 
of people — a consolidated, absolute gov- 
ernment of united people, and no longer 
an incoherent confederacy of repelling 
and discordant States. Its full success 
in operation was gravely doubted. Able 
and commanding minds opposed it earn- 
estly; wiser minds counselled and suc- 
ceeded in its acceptance and establish- 
ment. Franklin said : "I consent to 
this Constitution because I expect no 
better, and because I am not sure it is 
not the best. The opinions I have had 
of its errors I sacrifice to the public 
good." " There are some things in this 
new form," said Washington, "I will 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 55 

readily acknowledge, which never did, 
and I am persuaded never will, obtain 
my cordial approbation. But I did 
then conceive, and do now most firmly 
believe, that in the aggregate it is the 
best Constitution that can be obtained 
at this epoch, and that this or a disso- 
lution awaits our choice, and is the only 
alternative." And again he says: "It 
appears to me little short of a miracle 
that the delegates from so many States, 
different from each other in their man- 
ners, circumstances, and prejudices, 
should unite in forming a system of 
national government so little liable to 
well-founded objections." 

On the seventeenth of September, 
1787, this venerated man affixed his sig- 
nature to the document, as the President 
of the Convention which had formed it , 



5 6 CHRISTIAN L YALTY, 

and his companions in the great work 
followed him with theirs. It was the 
great constructing day of this nation; 
of which it may be said, the nation was 
born on it. I have wondered that it 
has not been kept among the holidays 
of the American people. 

Now my loj^alty to Jerusalem is my 
love for her Constitution. I would trans- 
mit it as I have received it. To main- 
tain it, unbroken and supreme, I should 
contend to the last. And when a vio- 
lent assault has been made upon it, to 
break it down and destroy it — fearful 
as is civil discord and bloodshed — any 
amount of suffering to maintain the just 
order of a nation is nothing, compared 
to the higher, more complicated, and 
fearful sufferings which must come from 
its violent overthrow, and the dissolution 
of society into a mob. 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 5 7 

What it may cost, what it may require, 
what it may impose, are to me considera- 
tions of no consequence in comparison. 
Its preservation is cheap at any cost. 
And I should stand at the pumps while I 
could stand, and bail as long as strength 
would suffer me to do it, rather than 
permit the ship to sink, and to carry 
every one within to the bottom of the 
sea. I therefore say : Never give up 
this contest for the Constitution. Com- 
pel this rebellion to submit to its au- 
thority. And if you must perish, per- 
ish nobly maintaining the peerless cause 
of liberty, government, and order. Let 
my right hand forget her cunning, and 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
mouth, if in this I prefer not Jerusalem 
above my chief joy. 



^m 



\^M,.ikM h ^. hhh hi^, ^ii^M 



Hogalts to Jrnissalcm in Hobe Cor 
iitr (^oijtrnmcnt* 



5. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
love for ]ier government. Her Consti- 
tution is the charter of her government 
— the fixed and final scheme arranged 
for its construction and its perpetual 
operation and control. This govern- 
ment is subordinate to the Constitution, 
must submit to it, be ruled by it, defend 
it, guard it, fight for its protection, in- 
sist upon the absolute obedience of the 
people of the nation to it, or punish 
with a severity, merciful to the nation, 
those who choose to trample on its au- 
thorit}'. 



CHRISTIAN L YAL TY. 5 9 

The government is in tlie two houses 
of Congress, as the makers of the laws 
— in the President, as the executor of 
the laws — in a supreme court, as the 
interpreter of the laws. Here is a gov- 
ernment of law, in its establishment, its 
interpretation, and its execution, bj the 
representatives of the sovereignty of the 
people. And in every act of each, "We, 
the people of the United States/' act for 
ourselves ; and if these representatives 
of our will are unworthy or unfaithful, 
our Constitution provides a just and 
immediate way for their responsibility 
and punishment. 

But we have a government. I am 
every day grateful in saying we are 
proud to have a strong and vigorous 
government. Our laws are intelligible 
and clear, and our President, for his 



GO CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

appointed term of service, is absolute. 
He is tlie individual utterance, expres-' 
sion, and manifestation of the will of 
tlie people. They have chosen him 
for four years, to rule for them, and 
in their name ; to rule them by the 
power which their own absolute sov- 
ereignty has committed to him. All 
the power of executing their laws they 
have intrusted absolutely to him, as a 
personal agent, an individual agent, with 
constitutional advisers, but with no con- 
stitutional superior. 

Kow I love this government. I love 
it in its origin. I. love it in its sim- 
plicity. I love it in its supremacy. I 
love it in its individuality. I love it 
in its constitutional strength. I love it 
in its personal power, determination, and 
will. It combines for me all the possible 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 61 

freedom of liberty for the man}^, consist- 
ent with order and tranquillity for the 
whole, and the vast security of absolute 
authority in an ultimate ruler from 
whom there is no appeal. It seems to 
me to have gathered the gems from all 
regions to make this new, last crown 
of a monarchical people — a ruling na- 
tion. 

There is an affected distinction made 
between the government and its ad- 
ministration. I agree that there is the 
possibility of such a distinction in the- 
ory. But it is the simple distinction 
between form and life, between con- 
ceded power and its activity. It is a 
distinction possible only in the theory. 
The administration is the government 
in actual life. " The executive power 
shall be vested in a President of the 



62 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

United States of America," is tlie ordi- 
nance wliicli creates this simple, perfect 
type. " He sliall hold his office during 
the term of four years," is the decree 
of duration to his future official life. 

Thus in the first section, article second 
of the Constitution, the form is arrayed. 
But the ideal of this immense poten- 
tiality is still dead. And when this 
sovereign people have said, in the ma- 
jesty of their right, "Abraham Lincoln, 
be thou this president for these four 
years," it is a breathing into the nostrils 
of this form the breath of life, and the 
man imagined becomes a living soul. 
The government arises into being in ad- 
ministration, and till the term of official 
being expires, you cannot separate the 
administration from the government. 
And my loyalty to the government, in 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 63 

wliicli I find the honor of m.j nation, 
is my loyalty to the administration of 
that government, in its personal repre- 
sentatives of the executive sovereignty 
of the j^eople. 

I agree that this does not involve my 
complete satisfaction in opinion with all 
the actings of the administration. It 
certainly did not for me when James 
Buchanan was the representative of the 
people's executive sovereignty. It cer- 
tainly has not for me, in all things, in 
the administration of his successor. But 
I should find no fault with alleged arbi- 
trary acts. I would that he were the 
reimpersonation of the iron will and de- 
termination of Andrew Jackson, and that 
every sympathizer with this shocking 
treason had been made to feel the 
power of the people's stern displeasure. 



6 4 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

And yet I rebuke my own impetuosity 
of spirit, and I lionor as perhaps far wiser 
tlie forbearance, the gentleness, the in- 
tegrity, the fixed pursuit of conscientious 
principle, which have so remarkably dis- 
tinguished the present righteous, but too 
forbearing sovereign of this people, — for 
in him I honor the unlimited sovereignty 
of the people of this nation in themselves. 
I make, therefore, no distinction, for 
there can be no practical one estab- 
lished between the government and 
the administration. And I view all 
hostility to the administration, — quite 
differing from mere disapprobation or 
disagreement of opinion, — to be but an 
assumed and convenient aspect of real 
hostility to the government itself; and 
while the administration is engaged in 
maintaining the supremacy of the Con- 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 65 

stitution and the verj existence of the 
nation, to be just that which the Con- 
stitution defines as "treason against the 
United States," consisting in "adhering 
to their enemies, and giving them aid 
and comfort." 

In the present crisis of the nation my 
loyalty is called to consider the whole, 
and the absorbing question, of rebellion 
and war ; and in a single indivisible al- 
ternative, to cleave to the government 
of my country, or to oppose and di.^- 
tract it while engaged in war. From 
this aspect of duty and of necessity I 
may well start back. 

" Those passion roots of desolating war, 
Which germinate in havoc fierce and far, 
What are they but a brood of sin, 
Sprung from a bosom-hell within ? 
Pride and envy, lust and power. 
Form the fiends which thus devour 



66 CHRISriA N LO YALTY. 

All principles of peace, a God incarnate came, 
To purchase by his pangs, and hallow by his 
name. 

•' What is false ' glory ' save a guilt disguised, 
A murderous cheat, magnificently prized ; 
When rifled home and ruined shrine 
With all the curse of war combine, 
And the shrieks of womanhood 
Heard in harrowing solitude, 
Throng round the gory track where armies fought 

or fled. 
And crushing war-steeds stamped their hoofs upon 
the dead. 

" Go, when the rush and roar of fight are past, 
And pallid moonbeams on the slain are cast ; 
Go muse around the mangled heap. 
Who there in weltering havoc sleep ; 
Youth and manhood as they fell. 
Far from home, and loved so well; 
And while 3'ou heave a sigh o'er many a sunken 

brow. 
Think what the spirits feel whose flesh lies 
mouldering now," 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 6 7 

I see and feel all this most sadly. 
But there is a liiglier consideration of 
responsibility still. A nation's over- 
throw is planned and sought by the 
wickedness of selfish and ambitions men. 
The sacrifices and the loss to them are 
nothing, for they had nothing, and every 
thing was to be gained. That nation 
must protect and defend its own in- 
habitants and people at whatever cost. 
And there we stand. This rebellion 
must be subdued ; this government 
must be sustained ; this administration 
must be upheld; whatever expenditure 
of men, of money, or of time may be 
required, or greater evils far become 
the alternative. And the duty of the 
administration is to subdue, or to de- 
stroy. And if there be no willing sub- 
mission yielded to a rightful authority, 



6 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

then is its duty absolute destruction of 
the guilty. And the same responsibility 
which compels a father to kill a beast, a 
madman, or a violent robber and mur- 
derer, in the defence of his own house, 
and to rescue and provide for those, a 
neglect of whom makes him worse than 
an infidel, according to the command of 
God, — requires the supreme magistrate to 
bear and use the sword, till the invading 
enemies of the nation committed to him 
shall have been subdued, and in the vic- 
torious protection of his people he shall 
become justly called the father and the 
saviour of his country. 

Doubtless the crisis is terrific. But 
the progress has been wonderful. And 
far from feeling a disappointment or 
discouragement from the past, I am only 
in wonder that the authorities of the na- 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 69 

tion have achieved so much. I look 
back upon these two years of warfare, 
surprised at the progress we have made, 
in what I have always believed would 
be a five years' war. 

How remarkable is the present as- 
pect of this Government ! What gov- 
ernment ever found itself upheld with 
such a system of finance in war, such 
armies of voluntary defenders, such unit- 
ed loyalty in a people, such rapid dis- 
grace of those who have opposed it ? 
What nation in war was ever distin- 
guished by such humanity to foes, such 
unwillingness to exercise even a mo- 
derate and just severit}^, such readiness 
to bear with injustice, and to utter an 
amnesty for crime? What other gov- 
ernment on earth would have tolerated 
in office, such manifest unfaithfulness 



70 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

to itself in liigli official and military 
stations, such, absolute disobedience to 
superior authority, sucb undisguised 
consideration of the welfare of enemies, 
or of future contingent personal attain- 
ments ? 

Surely the last charge that can with 
justice be made against such, an admin- 
istration is arbitrary violence or un- 
seemly severity. And the wisest ob- 
servers can only comfort themselves in 
their observation of such, remarkable 
patience and long-suffering, with the 
assured feeling that it must cut off 
from history the whole spirit of cen- 
sure, and render but the more exe- 
crable and odious the conspiracy with 
which it has dealt so mercifully. I 
have no complaint to make of these 
two years of the living government in 



CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 1\ 

administration, but of its slackness, in 
not punishing treason, in not banishing 
its abettors, and in suffering its own sub- 
ordinates in offices even when indisput- 
ably imjDlicated in it. 

My loyalty to Jerusalem is still love 
for its government, in a perfect confi- 
dence in its form, and in a continued 
trust in and a determined support of 
its administration. But one alternative 
is either righteous or merciful to the 
nation which has suffered such an out- 
rage, and so without cause, — to a com- 
munity whose peaceful employments and 
dwellings have been so assaulted and 
marauded upon by a mob of such vio- 
lence, l^either justice to the nation, 
mercy to the injured, protection to the 
country, care for posterity, nor fidelity to 
a great and imperative trust, will suffer 



72 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

any toleration, or light dealing with the 
leaders and instigators of such a re- 
bellious outbreak, so unnecessary, so 
cruel, so bitter,' so unsparing, and so 
reckless of all that is honorable in a 
community, and humane and beneficent 
in private life. Worse men, if character 
is to be illustrated by persistent conduct, 
the world has never seen, and they are 
to be righteously dealt with, only as 
the demonstrated enemies of the human 
race. 

But my regard for the present admin- 
istration advances with its own career. 
Its growth is in all the attributes which 
must attract the confidence and love of 
generous men. The day which has 
called us here together is a vivid illus- 
tration of this. How remarkably hon- 
orable to the Senate of the United 



CHRISTIAN LOYA LTY. 73 

States ,was the resolution unanimously 
adopted by them, suggesting such a 
reference to the Divine authority and 
will. 

^^ Resolved^ That devoutly recognizing 
the supreme authority a,nd just gov- 
ernment of Almighty God in all the 
affairs of men and of nations, and sin- 
cerely believing that no people, how- 
ever great in numbers and resources, 
or however strong in the justice of 
their cause, can prosper without his 
favor, and at the same time deploring 
the national offences which have pro- 
voked his righteous judgment, yet en- 
couraged in this day of trouble by the 
assurances of his Word to seek him 
for succor according to his appointed 
way, through Jesus Christ, the Senate 
of the United States do hereby request 



74 CHRISTIA N LO YALTY. 

the President of the United States, by 
his proclamation, to designate and set 
apart a day for national prayer and 
liurniliation, requesting all the people 
of the land to suspend their secular 
pursuits, and unite in keeping the day 
in solemn communion with the Lord 
of Hosts, supplicating him to enlighten 
the counsels and direct the policy of 
the rulers of the nation, and to support 
all our soldiers, sailors, and marines, 
and the whole people, in the firm dis- 
charge of duty, until the existing re- 
bellion shall be overthrown and the 
blessings of peace restored to our bleed- 
ing country." 

How equally creditable to himself 
is the Proclamation of the President : 

^'Whereas, The Senate of the United 



CHRISTIAN LOYA LTY. 75 

States, devoutly recognizing the supreme 
authority and just government of Al- 
mighty God in all the affairs of men 
and of nations, has, by a resolution, 
requested the President to designate 
and set apart a day for national prayer 
and humiliation ; and 

" Whereas^ It is the duty of nations, as 
well as of men, to own their dependence 
upon the overruling power of God, to 
confess their sins and transgressions, in 
humble sorrow, yet with assured hope 
that genuine repentance will lead to 
mercy and pardon, and to recognize the 
sublime truth announced in the Holy 
Scriptures, and proven by all history, 
that those nations only are blessed whose 
God is the Lord ; 

"And inasmuch as we know that, by 
his divine law, nations, like individuals, 



76 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

are subjected to punishments and chas- 
tisements in this world, may we not justly 
fear that the awful calamity of civil war 
which now desolates the land may be but 
a punishment inflicted upon us for our 
presumptuous sins, to the needful end of 
our national reformation as a whole peo- 
ple? 

" We have been the recipients of 
the choicest bounties of heaven. We 
have been preserved these many years 
in peace and prosperity. We have grown 
in numbers, wealth, and power, as no 
other nation has ever grown. But we 
have forgotten Grod. We have forgotten 
the gracious hand which preserved us in 
peace, and multiplied and enriched and 
strengthened us; and we have vainly 
imagined, in the deceitfulness of our 
hearts, that all these blessings were pro- 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 11 

duced by some superior wisdom and vir- 
tue of our own. Intoxicated with un- 
broken success, we have become too 
self-sufficient to feel the necessity of re- 
deeming and preserving grace, too proud 
to pray to the Grod that made us ! 

" It behoves us, then, to humble our- 
selves before the offended Power, to con- 
fess our national sins, and to pray for 
clemency and forgiveness. 

" Now, therefore, in compliance with 
the request, and fully concurring in the 
views of the Senate, I do, by this my 
proclamation, designate and set apart 
Thursday, the thirtieth day of April, 
1863, as a day of national humiliation, 
fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby 
request all the people to abstain on that 
day from their ordinary secular pursuits, 
and to unite, at their several places 



18 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 

of public worship and in their respective 
homes, in keeping the day holy to the 
Lord, and devoted to the humble dis- 
charge of the religious duties proper to 
that solemn occasion. 

" All this being done in sincerity and 
truth, let us then rest humbly in the 
hope, authorized by the divine teachings, 
that the united cry of the nation will be 
heard on high, and answered with bless- 
ings, no less than the pardon of our na- 
tional sins, and the restoration of our 
now divided and suffering country to its 
former happy condition of unity and 
peace ! 

" In witness whereof, I have hereunto 
set my hand, and caused the seal of the 
United States to be aflSxed. 

" Done at the city of Washington, this 
thirtieth day of March, in the year 



CIIRISTIAX LOYALTY. 79 

of our Lord one thousand eight 
[l.s.] hundred and sixty-three, and of 
the Independence of the United 
States the eighty-seventh. 

"Abraham Lincoln. 
" By the President. 

"William H. Seward, 

" Secretary of State." 

The Christian people of this land can- 
not fail to honor and to sustain, with the 
most loyal devotion, an administration, 
so distinguished by all the integrity of 
principle which can honor an executive, 
and all the fidelity of personal feeling 
which can exalt an individual. And in 
looking at the whole field spread out be- 
fore me, I behold a glorious government 
contending, like a tempest-tossed but 
majestic ship, with a storm of intense 



80 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

violence and fury, riding on the angry 
wave uninjured, unshrinking, facing still 
the vehemence of the tempest. I behold 
an administration distinguished by pro- 
bity, moderation, calmness, honesty, and 
truth, — standing still on deck, a wearied 
but unresting pilot, determined to weather 
the gale, and bring safe to port the pre- 
cious trust committed to his care. I see 
his lofty head above the gathered anxious 
multitude around him, still tranquil, deter- 
mined, generous, and unexcited ; not fast 
enough, not ambitious enough, not stern, 
not avenging enough, I am ready to say, 
as I hear multitudes say around me. But 
what man has said, or dares in the face 
of the American people, to say, not hon- 
est enough, not conscientious enough, not 
enough really trying and determined to 
do that which is right? I see him with 



CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 8 1 

his surroundiDg council, baring his head 
amidst the storm, and while taxing all 
his energies of mind and heart and feel- 
ing for the most disinterested and thor- 
ough fulfilment of his fearful duties, with 
uplifted ej^e calling aloud through all the 
wave-washed deck, in a voice that all 
shall hear, and none shall misunder- 
stand : " Look aloft, look aloft." Let 
us pray to God, and trust ourselves to 
him. Let us strive to do his will, and 
ask and supplicate his gracious blessing 
with us. He it is who maketh the winds 
his messengers, and the flaming fire his 
ministers. 

I stand and survey this majestic scene, 
this sublime spectacle, and I return to 
my own heart and say : Before I am 
disloyal to such a government, to such 
an administration, to such a representa- 



82 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 

tive of the sovereign majesty of my 
people, let my right hand forget her 
cunning, and my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth. To my nation, to 
my country, to the principle of freedom, 
to the Constitution, to the Government, 
while I live, will I be faithful ; and how- 
ever depressed or downcast or desjDond- 
ing may be the incidents and elements 
of the day, even though in captivity I 
sit by the rivers of Babylon, I will never 
forget, dishonor, or deny the Jerusalem 
I have loved, beneath whose shade I 
have grown and been refreshed, and 
with whose sons and daughters I have 
gone to the house of God and taken 
sweet delight. Still in prayer for my 
beloved country will I look up to the 
King of kings and Lord of lords. 



CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 83 

" Yes, Lord of hosts ! if blood and battle come, 
And weaponed patriots fight for hearth and home, 
"While tented field and bivouac, 
The trumpet, steed, and victor track, 
Soldiers of the world delight. 
Who for crowns of conquest fight, 
The prowess of thy Church will prove by ceaseless 

prayer. 
As Joshua did of old, true victory is there. 

" Blest Teacher ! who unteachest pride to man, 
In perfect harmony with God's own plan. 
Leader of Saints ! thy meekness bring. 
When war and faction round us ring 
Yells of fierceness, which betray 
Passions in their fiendish play. 
Come with thy gentleness, celestial as refined, 
And let our struggle be, who most shall love 
mankind," 



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